The next morning Angstrom and I began our journey downstream to the falls.
The time after a climactic event is like the period of slack water after a high tide; all the work is done, there is no place for purposeful motion. During the days we traveled back to the falls Angstrom and I found it was thought, not motion, that was redundant.
At the top of the falls I untied the rope from the tree and wrapped it around my shoulder. After we climbed down beside the torrent we built a raft of driftwood bound with rope and we floated away on the slow-moving current.
On one of the many evenings that we lay on our backs, drifting downstream under the stars, Angstrom said, "If the aliens had a purpose, then what is the purpose of Paschal?"
"It is a beacon," I said.
"Marking a vast store of knowledge?"
"Yes, a font of knowledge. But there is more. Paschal is an evolutionary incubator, a machine for arresting the material evolution of matter and accelerating its evolution into spirit. What we have seen is the evolution of evolution."
"But why the AMF?"
"To strip away the objects and the thoughts that we have made that make us what we are. Only when we have shed our manufactured burdens may we pass through the single narrow gate in our own garden wall and wander into other gardens."
Angstrom stayed behind at the temple where the knowledge of an ancient race was stored in a drop of water. He was eager to squeeze his frame through the narrow gate.
On my way back to the glider's crash site I thought of a Van Gogh painting called "The Drinkers." A copy hangs on the wall of my whitewashed room. By the way, Van Gogh was said to be mad, but I doubt that. Four figures, a child, a youth, a middle-aged man and an old man, stand around a table and drink from a single pitcher. The child drinks milk, the youth water, the middle-aged man coffee and the old man wine, all from that single magical pitcher. Van Gogh's figures crackle with energy in their desperate attempts to slake their various thirsts. As I said, I doubt that Van Gogh was mad.
I returned to the crash site of the glider, slid the remote control from its pocket in the bulkhead and summoned the shuttlecraft down from the belly of the empty Chardin. Rome was surprised at my return. After all, the arrival in Earth orbit of a naked priest, bearded, long-haired, tanned and seemingly incoherent, is not a common event.
No one believed my story, of course. I half hoped they might see me as a prophet coming out of the wilderness, but they sent me back to this seminary and gave me easy work to do, as if I were an old nun. Obediently, I have done as my order wished. I have kept my peace and worked here quietly, thinking, making dreams. Twenty summers and three popes have come and gone and I am still working on the tasks assigned to me. All of them.
But the evening grows chill around us, the wooden bench you sit on is quite hard, and we must conclude our business. You have listened to my story and now I must answer your question.
Ah, do not speak yet. Did I not tell you I know what you came to ask?
There can be only one reason that the Holy Father has sent you here to question me in this peaceful garden. Something has happened, something quite unexpected. The Holy Father has received a message and he thinks it came from Paschal II.
Perhaps a passing freighter picked up a signal and relayed it to Rome, or perhaps a subspace message from the planet was received directly by a Vatican antenna at Castel Gandolfo, high in the Apennines. Not so. I know the message came in a dream. Yes, the Holy Father dreamed so vividly that he could not ignore his dream.
What is so surprising about the idea of the pope receiving a dream? After all, the Bible says that God spoke to many men through their dreams.
Have you ever noticed that dreams are much more powerful at the turning of the seasons? We religious have time to take note of subtle things like that.
So who sent the message? You probably think it was sent by the hules, or by their children who must have developed in unimaginable ways while they were growing up on Paschal? Or was the message from Angstrom, offering alien truth in place of human knowledge? Let me assure you that neither Angstrom, nor the hules--nor the aliens, if that is what you are wondering--have any interest in talking to the Holy Father.
He does not know who sent the message.
But I do, even though the dream he received was an unsigned invitation. The Holy Father has been asked to visit Paschal II. He feels he has been summoned. He wonders if he should think of the journey as a pilgrimage. He worries that the message may not be an invitation, but a false temptation sent by Satan.
The Holy Father wants to know if he should go. He is young and accustomed to dealing with facts, not dreams. After all, he is a scientist, a biologist of some renown, I hear. Weren't you surprised that a scientist, a biologist, a student of evolution, should be elected pope?
I wonder how that happened.
No matter. Here is my answer to his question: When he makes this pilgrimage he must remember the folk stories of the Auvergne.
You think that is no answer? I would have thought that you, a clever official of the Vatican, would have enjoyed my indirect response! Allow me to elaborate.
Like a folk hero of the Auvergne, when the Holy Father returns from Paschal he will be changed, and subtly wounded. Now do you understand?
What will this do to the world? Well, I have good reason to be certain that Aquinas was completely wrong. (You are right in your suspicion--before my trip to Paschal my obedience was not always perfect.) The Holy Father will return from Paschal with a radiant union of faith and reason which will wound the world.
Now do you understand?
Good. Why don't you sit here in the quiet darkness, in this arbor at the very end of this path of worn gray stones, and think about what I have said?
I must excuse myself and go to bed. Today was the last day of the summer and in
the morning I must rise early to my work. In the new season I will be very busy
pruning, cutting away dead growth, and tearing out old unwanted vegetation by
the roots. Later I will be planting deep in the earth so that new flowers will
flourish in the spring. After all, this is a big garden and the Holy Father
might like to know that, quite recently, I have become the gardener. 
"The Gardener" by Jim Cowan. First published in InterText, volume 4, number 5.
Copyright (c) 1994 by Jim Cowan. Reprinted by permission of the author.
